It Happened on Maple Street Read online

  And his mother was out in the living room. She knew we were in Tim’s room. With his bed.

  And the erotic weights.

  Suddenly, I was mortified. I opened my mouth to tell him so. But didn’t get the chance.

  The second the door was closed Tim pulled me to him. He was like a starved man, clutching me so tightly I couldn’t think of anything but him. Being as close to him as possible.

  His hunger mirrored mine, and I didn’t feel any shame at all.

  I was burning up. Nothing else mattered but his lips pressing against mine, opening mine. I had no idea what to do, but I needn’t have worried about what I didn’t know. Loving Tim was natural. My tongue knew how to mate with his.

  Or he was just an incredibly good teacher.

  I couldn’t get enough—didn’t ever want the moments to end. He stepped backward and with his hand pressed against the back of my thigh, took me with him. My body was an extension of his. Connected to his.

  I needed more.

  I knew it was wrong when he laid me back against the bed. We were there to lift weights. His mother was just feet away. Good girls became bad girls when they lay on beds with boys. And I couldn’t stop him. My brain and my heart were at war, and my brain was not going to win.

  “You’re so good at that.” His voice was husky. He was lying on top of me, cradling me with his arms, staring down at me with those brown eyes that I recognized from another lifetime. Another realm.

  “At what?” The words stuck in my throat.

  “Kissing.”

  He was kidding, right? I had no idea what I was doing. No experience except with him.

  “I want to kiss you again.”

  “Okay.”

  My answer wasn’t necessary.

  I couldn’t stop him from kissing me, but I would stop him after that. He wouldn’t get to second base again. My bra was going to stay in place. He was not going to touch my breasts. And certainly not my nipples. The way that made me feel was just plain wrong.

  I was a good girl.

  But he could kiss me for the rest of the night. The rest of my life.

  Tim’s tongue was playing with mine, touching, withdrawing, exploring. I loved it. Was consumed by his musky cologne. The half groans he was making ignited me.

  His hand was at my side. Under my shirt. But that was okay. It was only my side. He was not going to touch my breasts again.

  He moved, his hips rubbing against my pelvic bone.

  I moved, too, opening my legs just a little bit. And he rubbed. He was big beneath his jeans. And hard. Like a rock.

  I was fascinated by this part of him that touched me and grew. I wanted to see it. To watch it. To feel it.

  And his hand slid up, touching my ribs.

  That was okay. It was just ribs. He was not going to touch my breasts. I opened my mouth wider.

  And I moaned.

  This was wrong. And so right. I needed him.

  His hand slid over my breast. It stopped on top of it. Cupping it. It was time to tell him to stop. And I was going to. As soon as he tried to get underneath my bra. He could touch my bra. He could not touch my breasts.

  My breath came in gasps, my whole body straining for something that was just out of reach. Something I’d never experienced before. I didn’t know what would happen. But I knew that I’d sell my soul to let it happen. I yearned to find what was there. I had to fly. And to fall.

  Tim unclipped my bra and covered my naked breast with his bare hand. He touched my nipple and then held it between his fingers.

  And my hips were reaching up to meet his. To seek his. To push against his hardness.

  Oh, God. Help me. Forgive me. I was not being a good girl.

  That night on the way home, I nestled up to Tim in the car, lethargic and in love. I’d probably hate myself in the morning—again—but at that moment, in the dark, private world in the car, I was happy. The radio was playing softly in the background and, as a song came on, I listened to the words, traveling along with them, until I realized I could have written the song. Every single word was true.

  It can’t be wrong . . . The woman crooned, and followed the words with something about it feeling right.

  “I love that song. I broke the silence that had fallen when we’d hit the highway. “Every word of it is true.”

  “‘You Light Up My Life,’” Tim named the song. And then said, “You do mine, too.”

  He smiled down at me and hugged me close.

  Parking his brother’s station wagon in the circular drive in front of Tara’s house, Tim walked her to the door. It was late. After midnight. He had to get home—had to be at work at the deli in the grocery store in town at 6:00 AM

  But when she said, “Do you want to come in? Maybe have a Pepsi, some caffeine for the ride home?” he hesitated.

  There was a light on in the foyer of the house. Everything else was dark.

  “What about your parents?”

  “I’m sure they’re in bed. They won’t care. They’d rather you have some caffeine than fall asleep on the way home.”

  He was in the door before she said another word. No way was he turning down a chance to have Tara in his arms again.

  He wasn’t sure what happened to the Pepsi idea. One second they were standing together in the family room, and the next they were in a bean bag in front of a fireplace that still smoldered with embers.

  “My folks must’ve had a fire tonight,” he heard Tara say, though he couldn’t be sure of that either.

  All he knew was that the woman of his dreams was in his arms and he couldn’t get enough of her.

  Ever.

  The next thing he knew it was 4:00 AM.

  Shit. He had to get Mike’s car back and get to work. Neither Mike nor his wife cared that he borrowed the car, but they’d care if they needed it and he hadn’t brought it back like he’d promised. They had little kids to take care of.

  With a hurried goodbye, he started on the long drive that had very quickly become rote to him. So rote that by the time he hit his exit, still fifteen minutes from home, he was having a hard time keeping his eyes open.

  “Just a few more miles,” he said out loud, rolling down the window for a bit of fresh air.

  And when, a couple of minutes later, he started to nod off, he said it again. “Just a few more miles.”

  More like ten. His voice fell flat in the car’s lonely interior.

  The next thing he heard was tires on gravel.

  Jerking, he woke up and realized that he’d missed a curve and was heading straight for a telephone pole. Fast.

  He slammed the brake pedal to the floor and turned the steering wheel sharply. The car spun around and he held on, dizzy, scared.

  He was going to die.

  Suddenly the car came to a complete stop. With his head feeling like he was still spinning, he looked around. He’d landed about ten feet from the telephone pole, still upright. He hadn’t hit anything. Nothing was damaged.

  Except his psyche.

  Thank God. Mike would kill him if he wrecked his car. There’d be no forgiveness there.

  Because it wasn’t the first time Tim had been in a spinning car. Shaking, Tim was suddenly back a few years, thirteen years old again. He and his brother Jeff had been out with a couple of buddies late one night. Jeff, fourteen then, had been driving. A sign indicating a coming turn was blocked, and they’d taken the curve too fast. The car had rolled, and they’d ended up in a farmer’s field.

  When they’d made it out of the car and limped their way to a house, they’d called Mike. Their brother had come to get them and then spent the night in the emergency room while Tim’s broken collarbone and various other injuries were tended to. Mike had let both of them know then that there better not be a second time.

  Taking his foot off the brake, Tim eased the car forward slowly, a few feet at a time until he was back on the road. Wide awake now, he knew one thing. He couldn’t risk his brother’s wrath for his stupid
choices. It was time for him to look for his own car.

  Six

  I DIDN’T READ ROMANCES ANYMORE. They paled in comparison to the real thing. I didn’t need to imagine my Harlequin hero, or find him on pages of books written by women privy to all of the things I could only imagine. I didn’t need to imagine anymore.

  I had the real thing.

  I just had no idea how to keep him for more than the moment. I loved our moments, but I needed a future. And I needed it fast.

  Before I became something I would hate for the rest of my life. A loose woman. Harlequin heroines did not have sex before they were married. They married for convenience and a lot of other wrong reasons, but they didn’t have sex without marriage.

  If I was going to write for Harlequin, I had to be worthy of a Harlequin heroine. I had to be a Harlequin heroine.

  Those women were my mentors.

  My moral compass.

  I had to live up to them.

  And I was thinking of Tim no matter what activity I was engaged in.

  “Run errands with me?” My friend, Rebecca, was staying with me again. She’d had a run in with her brother-in-law and didn’t want to go home to her room in her sister’s house.

  Rebecca knew me. Better than most. And I’d been neglecting her.

  “Sure,” I said, jumping up from the gold chair in the corner of my bedroom, the room I’d been allowed to decorate myself, the room that I’d shared with Rebecca for most of our senior year.

  Tim might call. I didn’t want to miss him.

  But Rebecca was lonely. She had issues. We’d been friends since the fourth grade.

  And her father had died when she was five; he’d been a teacher, just like Tim’s. She’d had a hard life. I cared about her. Before Tim, I’d been there for her 100 percent. What kind of person was I if I suddenly ditched her?

  “Let’s go,” I said. “I’ll drive.”

  We usually took Rebecca’s car. It was bigger and she’d had her license longer, but I wanted to use my gas so she could save hers. I was going to miss Tim’s call, but I was being a good person.

  My heart wasn’t appeased. It yearned for Tim.

  Rebecca needed to stop at the card shop. I talked about Tim all the way there.

  “He thinks President Kennedy’s assassination was orchestrated by one of his own.” I stated the virulent news where I knew it was safe.

  “Wow, he was?”

  “I don’t know. Tim thinks so.”

  “Wow. I had no idea.”

  I had no idea, either. But I wondered if he was right. I’d heard the supposition before. But for the first time in my life, I was considering the possibility.

  Tim was changing me.

  And that scared me.

  “I need a funny card for Kirby,” Rebecca said as we walked together into our favorite card and gift shop. I was huddled in my jean jacket and still freezing.

  “Has he called you?”

  “No, but he and Kelly have been working out, getting ready for baseball.”

  Baseball was in the spring. This was the fall. And Kirby’s twin brother, Kelly, didn’t like Kirby hanging out with Rebecca.

  They were rich boys.

  Rebecca lived in a house with holes in the floors. And the walls. Not that Kirby or anyone else we associated with knew that.

  “Maybe you should wait until he calls you,” I said, looking at the racks of cards as we made our way down the aisle.

  Romance.

  I glanced. For the Guy in My Life. Did Tim see himself that way? Or would the possessive cramp him?

  To My Lover. No. We needed no further encouragement in that area.

  To the One I Love. There was a couple on the cover that reminded me of Tim and me. He had luscious dark hair and she was little and blonde. But what I liked most was the way the man was cradling the woman in his arms and looking at her as if she were all he’d need for the rest of his life. I opened the card.

  You and me. Together forever. I wanted to buy the card. It was perfect. And I hoped Tim thought so, too. But he hadn’t said so. He hadn’t said anything about the future.

  For the One and Only. I opened that one, too.

  When I found you, I found the other half of myself. Exactly. But what if Tim only wanted sex?

  “There you are.” Rebecca came around the corner, and I turned red. I had no business looking at these cards. Tim and I weren’t even going together.

  “I’ve been looking all over for you,” Rebecca said, glancing at the cards in front of me. Thankfully I didn’t have one in my hand. I could, ostensibly, have been daydreaming. Or just walking by.

  My pretty friend handed me a card. Charlie Brown and Snoopy were on the front. The message was about friends who belonged together. “What do you think?”

  “It’s good,” I said, feeling sorry for her. Rebecca had had more boyfriends during high school than I’d had hamburgers in an entire year. But Kirby was the one. I’d never seen her so tied up in knots over a guy.

  And I’d never seen one less interested in spending time with her, either.

  “I was thinking I’d drive it over to his house and leave it in the mailbox.”

  Kirby lived forty-five minutes away—in the opposite direction from Tim. “What if he sees you?”

  She shrugged, glanced at the card again. “I’m not sure about this one. Give me a sec to take one more look.”

  She could have all the time she wanted. I had my own dilemma: my own inner demon driving me to buy a card for a man I was desperately in love with who hadn’t said a word about loving me back.

  I moved on. Friendship.

  Was that what Tim and I were? Friends? The first couple of cards I looked at I put back. They were clearly intended for friends like Rebecca and me.

  Hey Dummy. The card caught my attention. Ziggy was on the front. I liked and respected him for his pithy insights.

  The message was lighthearted, casual—nothing like the avowal of undying love I needed to impart. Hey Dummy. Like I didn’t think he was perfect. Like I wasn’t besotted. Irreverent, when I was bone-deep certain that Tim was the most intelligent man I’d ever known.

  Glancing behind me to make certain that Rebecca wasn’t anywhere close, I opened the card.

  I think you’re Great! The words were written in a large scrawl, on a slant.

  And I knew I had to buy the card. Tim might think me forward, pushy. He might get cramped. Run in the opposite direction. But if he was going to do that because I was crazy about him, because I needed to tell him so, then it was best that I find out sooner rather than later.

  And at least it wasn’t an avowal of undying love.

  I made a beeline for the register, hoping to pay for the card and hide it in my purse before Rebecca saw what I was doing.

  I waited until the cashier was finishing with the last person at the counter and went forward.

  “What’d you find?”

  It was like Rebecca had been watching me, waiting, she appeared so quickly. Pounced so quickly was how it felt to me.

  “A card.”

  “Can I see it?”

  I handed it to her. And looked at the ground while she read. The carpet was grey. Commercial. Dirty and ugly.

  “You’re getting Tim a card.” She handed it back to me. If she told my mom, in front of my dad, that I was buying Tim a card before he’d even said he liked me, I’d get a lecture for sure.

  “Yeah.” And if she thought it was the wrong thing to do, too, I was going to do it anyway. No matter how much her level of experience in the dating department outweighed mine.

  Rebecca had liked a lot of guys. I was in love.

  The words of wisdom I was expecting didn’t come.

  “What do you think?” I asked.

  She nodded, her perfectly feathered bangs giving her that elfin look that all the guys went for. Her breasts were overly enviable in size, too. A fact that was further emphasized by her slim waist and the tight sweaters she always wore.r />
  “You think I should give it to him?”

  “Yeah, I do. You really like this guy.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Yeah, well, he needs to know that. And to do something about it if he hopes to keep you. Besides, it doesn’t say anything about the L word, so it’s not like it should scare him completely off.”

  Wow. I wasn’t as backward as I’d thought.

  He found his car at the first dealership he visited—a Pontiac LeMans Sport Coupe. It called out to him when he pulled on the lot. The second he saw the pristine exterior with the black landau roof and, inside, the leather seats and the shifter on the console, he knew the car had to be his.

  He pictured Tara in the passenger seat. And in the backseat, too. She’d be impressed. She’d love it. How could she not?

  He wasn’t going to say anything to her about it, though. Not until he knew for sure it was his.

  “Can I drive it?” he asked the salesman who approached him out on the lot.

  “Yeah, you can take it overnight if you want, let your mother and brother have a look at it.”

  He was in Eaton where he’d lived all his life. Where everyone knew his family—and his business.

  He didn’t need anyone to have a look at it. He knew cars as well as anyone in his family. But he wasn’t going to blow his chance to keep the car overnight.

  And when his student loan came in a couple of days later he hurried back to the dealership, worried the whole way that the car would be gone.

  It wasn’t. It was as if the LeMans was just sitting there waiting for him to take it home.

  The next day sitting with Tara in geology lecture, he was about to burst with his news.

  “Ever make out in the backseat of a car?” he whispered about a quarter of the way through the lecture.

  “Tim,” her whisper was firm, a reprimand, not an invitation. She squeezed his hand, though. They were holding hands—his right to her left so she could take notes—as they did every class these days.